Use a VPN, like hidemyass.com our many others. You really need to use the paid service instead of what's free. They have trial deals too.
You actually spoof the website into believing you are on logged in from wherever you choose.
Google VPN and you will see many things are available. Other thing is you can setup a pc or laptop when you are in Colombia with gotomypc.com https://www.gotomypc.com/

When the other computer/laptop is on you just log in from anywhere in the world amd do business remotely. You would obviously need the persons pc our yours in Colombia needs to be turned on and with an internet connection.

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Avianca is one of the worst airlines in the Americas and is best avoided at all costs. I just checked and see no real difference in pricing between dollar and peso fares. Are you sure you're using a current rip-off exchange rate? NOBODY uses the posted trade rate. Even bank to bank has a seller's discount. And you will never get the interbank rate.

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My experience

- there's generally no difference between the Colombian version of the site and the US version for International fares.
- Internationally in Business (and I know that not everyone flies business) Avianca is very, very competitive. I used to fly JFK-BOG-SCL on Avianca and it was less than half the price of the LAN direct flight
- Avianca has Promo business fares that you should check on both the Colombian and US sites. It is more than Economy - but you might be surprised at how low the difference is
- Domestically you can see differences in costs. One of the reasons is that on the Colombian site there's generally another fare category 'Super Promo' Economy class fare that isn't on the US site. My guess that's to compete with the Vivacolombia. That I think is often the comparison people make between the the Colombian and US costs.
- Domestically there are also Promo business fares that I've not seen on the US site. Some of those are real bargains outside busy travel times. Again, it's just a bigger seat and a little more attention on a short flight which probably won't appeal to most.
- if you're arriving from overseas and include any domestic legs in your flight itinerary I think you'll find that you lose the pricing difference that you get in 'Y' between the US and Colombian sites of the domestic legs. There's also multi city choice on the both sites that will let you do that (fly LHR to BOG and then take a flight to CTG a few days later).
- One problem is paying on the Colombian site. Recently we were booking 2 R/T tickets MDE-JFK. The link to make the payment from BCO wasn't working. Calling Avianca they said it was because the payment was being made using the Safari browser, and that you needed to use Chrome. Tried that, and it wasn't the case. Not the first time I've heard from Avianca that you need to use a different browser by the way. I then used a US Card (with a Colombian address). This had the reservation semi-confirmed and in a 'pending review' situation. This was meant to take no more than 8 hours. I checked with them after 8 hours- and was told 'check tomorrow'. I checked the next day - still under review. Only when I then said I was going to cancel the booking did they ring the Security department. They were pleasant enough, asked a fewquestions and said that this was only happening as it was the first time I was using that card on the Colombian site. It then went through. It wasn't seamless and a very different experience than on the US site.

As for Avianca quality

- if you fly them a lot they are very good to you. You'll get plenty of domestic upgrades (not a big deal I admit, but something)
- the planes are new and the entertainment system isn't bad. In the newer planes the seats aren't bad. On the aircraft most of the BOG-JFK flights are now wide-bodied A330s or B787'Dreamliners' a big improvement over A320s and 737s.
- food in drink in both Economy and Business isn't great (particularly in the latter). However in Economy it's probably as good if not better than you'll get the US airlines. Business the reverse.
-Service on the ground isn't great. Check in for example struggles with Colombians returning with piles of huge suitcases. Lounges are so-so. - and the snacks in the Colombians ones are sad.

Avianca isn't perfect, but if you're traveling too and from Colombia no one has the choice of flights or number of connections. Domestically they'll even serve you a soda in Coach on a flight from BOG to MDE - around 20 minutes in the air. That's almost unique these days.

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"is there a way to trick the Avianca website into thinking you are in Colombia?"
===============================

You could try being really lazy, an hour late to meetings, and not paying for your 5 children.

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Tim we are not talking about an exchange rate here.

Listen carefully. If the Avianca server detects you are in the USA the prices are dramatically increased as to the prices if it detects you are booking from inside of Colombia

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00abuse

Over the years I've booked plenty of Avianca flights either in the US, Colombia and even a couple of times in other locations. I've never seen this 'dramatic' difference that you suggest based on location. Do you have any examples?

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8901. That's just not the case. The differences are due to exchange rate. Avianca (or shall we just call them, "reprehensible scumbag airline?") charges the same fare regardless of where the ticket is purchased. The difference in price is the price of currency conversion. Use a proxy server and try it. There is a price penalty for buying in a currency other than the COP. Try logging on to a Spanish proxy and buying in Euros. You'll see a HUGE penalty there due to the recent unpleasantness.

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Sorry Tim your just not getting it.

There was ..is? a company that actually booked for you from Colombia for a fee.

I was just looking at flights from MZl /Manizales to SDQ Santo Domingo and the price was over $700 USD and a friend in Colombia looked and he could get it for under $400 USD

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Then DON'T USE THEM! Use the Avianca online booking. You will pay for currency conversion if you pay in a currency other than COP.

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And another piece of advice, don't fly Avianca if you can possibly avoid it. Lousy, surly service and chronic late departures are almost guaranteed. Check COPA. Or if you really want bad service, try Viva Colombia. They don't pretend to offer anything other than a seat and a chance at taking off. They charge accordingly.

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Tim ! Pay attention

Forget about currency conversion.

I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT CURRENCY CONVERSION

PLEASE enough already. What will/does it take to get through to you ???

Last try ... an example.. If you book flight A in the US for $100 there is no conversion charges nothing it is $100

If you booked the same flight A in Colombia and it was $50,000 COP and your friend bought it for you THERE ARE NO CURRENCY CONVERSION CHARGES from Avianca he bought it for you in Colombia with COP.

In order to pay him back the $50,000 COP it would be under or about $20 USD

But we are not talking about the conversion so please enough !

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No. You listen. IF YOU BOOK A FLIGHT THROUGH AVIANCA'S WEB SITE OR TRAVELOCITY OR ORBITZ... YOU WILL GET THE SAME PRICE REGARDLESS OF WHERE YOU ARE, WHICH CREDIT CARD YOU USE, YOUR HEIGHT, YOUR WEIGH, YOUR AFFINITY TO SUPPORT DONALD TRUMP...

You will, get a less than favorable exchange rate. The cheapest fare is to book directly with Avianca and pay in COP. It doesn't matter if you are sitting in Colombia, New York, London or Kabul.

I'm done with this thread.

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11abuse

Sure. Use a Colombian proxy server.

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00abuse

What can I say the man hates Avianca and is enamored with currency conversions ???????

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"is there a way to trick the Avianca website into thinking you are in Colombia?"
===============================

You could try being really lazy, an hour late to meetings, and not paying for your 5 children.

---------------------------------------

Good one Brandon It just might work lol.

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You can make any country you want your home country at Avianca's website. Play some sophisticated Wall Street stuff and arbitrage the fare.

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8901 is right. A domestic flight on Avianca can be more than double the price if you book it from the USA. I book the international flight into Bogota and my stepson in Colombia books the domestic leg for us (usually Bogota-Armenia). Saves a lot of dough.

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Haha it's funny how people tend to forget the original posted question.
Honestly I love Avianca, the planes, service amd the stewardesses in their cute uniforms. I don't always use them because I find their rate is higher than other airlines many times, even the lowest rate. That's just a personal thing. Spirit on the other hand can get on my nerves....

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Anybody know if there's still a DC-3 flying Bogota to Coca, the one with a mechanic on board? Gigantic Twin Wasp radials screaming at full supercharge scrambling to take off at 8,500 feet above sea level. That kind of thing changes your commercial aviation expectations for life.

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I don't agree with the statement that Avianca are one of the worst airlines in the Americas, I actually think they are the best. I've flown with them so much, I'm gold and have about 200,000 Lifemiles. I always get upgraded its superb. I've flown with LAN, TAM, GOL, Avianca Brasil, Azul, Taca, Copa, Insel Air, Delta, American, United and Aeromexico and think Acianca are better than all of them.

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Kee

new message
6/26/2016 17:08 EST

8901 is right. A domestic flight on Avianca can be more than double the price if you book it from the USA. I book the international flight into Bogota and my stepson in Colombia books the domestic leg for us (usually Bogota-Armenia). Saves a lot of dough.
======================================

Thank you Kee for confirming. The board is to share information and to learn from one another.

Now if you read this thread and didn't know about this two tier pricing that Avianca has and that you were being ripped for years cause you just learned now ... fine ... you learned something and could maybe avoid it going forward and save some money henceforth.
But if your an individual that refuses to believe or hear or even consider what others are telling them ... well that's a man who never learns in life because he believes he knows it all and will continue paying the gringo tax his entire life.
======================================


bigjailerman

new message
6/26/2016 17:29 EST

Haha it's funny how people tend to forget the original posted question.
Honestly I love Avianca, the planes, service amd the stewardesses in their cute uniforms. I don't always use them because I find their rate is higher than other airlines many times, even the lowest rate. That's just a personal thing. Spirit on the other hand can get on my nerves....
=======================================

I personally agree 100% with every statement you make big guy ...word,

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10abuse

The prices are often a lot more if you use the USA / UK site for booking your flights.

I always use the below. No need for VPN, it doesn't matter where I am in the world, I get the Colombian prices.

http://www.avianca.com/es-co/

If I used the below UK Svianca site, prices would be in GBP and more expensive (not due to currency conversion rates).

http://www.avianca.com/en-uk/

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Thank you Bickmed it was so simple and it worked like a charm.

Can someone in Colombia copy and paste the URL as Bickmed did for Copa please.

I suspect they may also have a gringo tax but I'm not sure.

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Excellent, didn't know I could do that..I thought it would revert!!! Gold star for you..

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Excellent, didn't know I could do that..I thought it would revert!!! Gold star for you..

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So 8901 it was good to find out that it isn't IP driven.

What was your saving today (ignoring any domestic itineraries which I think we've all agreed are cheaper on the Colombian site)?

It was a good day to book of course. If you paid in Pesos by the time it reaches your credit card you should see a saving in $s as the Peso was down some 6% today at the market close (3,058 to the $).

You also seem to avoided the problems using the Colombian site that many people have in terms of making payments. Sometimes it looks like it's all gone through smoothly but if you get a 'Purchase Confirmation' and it says further down 'payment being validated' you've not actually completed the ticket purchase.

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If that happens, call the callcentre (English speaking) and make the payment over the phone. They use a secure payment system (automated).

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Still waiting for that Copa URL paste from someone inside Colombia please

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00abuse

http://www.copaair.com/sites/co/en/pages/homepage.aspx

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@bickmed Given you're a reliable poster I'm surprised that you're suggesting that people rely on the Avianca call center

1. The wait on the english speaking lines (you may use the Spanish one) can be horrendous. Not uncommon for that wait to be an hour or so just to speak to someone
2. The secure automated system they use (it's the same one they use to take taxes on LifeMiles redemptions) is a complete mess and takes a long time. I guess they introduced it to get around Colombian's fear of giving credit card details over the 'phone.
3. It doesn't get you around the payment issue that I described on the Colombian site. If your payment is pending approval it's with the Security department and the call center can't fix it. They also aren't going to try and take payment from the same card over the 'phone. Getting to talk to the Security department is the only way to block that log jam. The call center will be reluctant to put you through - so you'll need something like a high LifeMiles status to convince them that it's worth it

On this thread there's has been is a reluctance to post clear examples about 'dramatic' differences in pricing outside of the domestic fares.

So let me start of with a simple example. Let's say we want to fly from JFK to BOG in a couple of weeks time. We'll take the 11th July. Not cherry picking here, just taking a date.

Looking on the Colombian version of the site first we see that all of the cheapest (PROMO) flights are gone for the directs. As we don't want to take 10 hours going to Bogota we move up to the next fare category. There are a few seats left there at COP 1,577,900. If we delay and lose those the next category is COP 1,729,000. So we book on the 01:10 out of JFK. Incidentally, we've not missed out on much by not taking a connecting flight. They are effectively the same price.

Let's go over the US site. Exactly the same situation with the availability of flights so we again need to go up a fare class and take the 1:10. The fare here is $536.90 and if we miss out on the seats left we'll go to $586.90. Note that if we don't look at the sites at the same time then those seats might have gone and we'd have to pay more. Perhaps that's one of the reasons people suggest fares are 'dramatically different'?

So the effective exchange rate between the COP fare and the US fare is $/COP 2,938. That's probably a pretty reasonable rate but we do know that at this very moment the Peso is trading at 3,016. If we were to get that rate (which we won't) our ticket would cost us $523 if we were to book on the Colombian site.

So in this best case you can argue that it's $14 cheaper to book on the Colombian site and that only works if your credit card gives you a better rate than Avianca is giving you - 2,938. If that's worth it for all of the potential hassles of using the Colombian site go for it.

Now I'm not saying that using the Colombian site can't on occasions be cheaper. There's an extra fare category on the domestic flights which can be quite a lot cheaper. But I'd encourage most people (unless you really subscribe to the 'they're out to get the gringos' theory) that you price any journey using both the US and the Colombian site. Unless the price differential is meaningful and you're outside of Colombia and don't have a Colombian bank account or credit card use the US site. If nothing else you're likely to have less hassles.

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8901 - now its posted but why does anyone in Colombia need to post you the website for COPA 'in Colombia'?

It's exactly the same as the Avianca example you were given. You go to the copaair.com site, go to the top, choose your location and language. The Colombian sites (or the Panama or Brazil ones) aren't hidden to anyone in the US. It's not like there's a separate site that you need to access. Pretty much every airline does that and the country/language selection it will OFFER you will either be based on your IP or if you use the site more regularly whatever was stored in the cookie as your choice. If you don't like it you can override it.

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Paradise,

My experience has been different with the Avianca call centre, although I do not use it that frequently. I usually use the English option, and it goes through; to the USA I assume. I rarely have to wait, and certainly not ever for an extended amount of time.

I admit the automated payment system can take a bit of time - however I prefer that to passing someone my credit card details. The most time seems to be taken with them getting it set up where I am put on hold for ages. Once 'in there', it is not too bad.

I have used the call centre to fix an online payment issue, although I cannot remember if it was 'pending' or if I received a message to contact or redo - probably the latter.

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I had to use the call center last week to try to move that payment along. I used the english choice and it was 50 minutes. It was late afternoon which might not have been the best time to call I will admit. As it was on a "C" class ticket I wasn't exactly impressed. The previous evening I had called and that wait was more like 10 minutes (but I was told to call back the next day).
In the same week my wife needed to call them. She used the Spanish line - her wait around 15 minutes.
They've definitely upped their security recently though. For example last night there was a message that (at least for the time being) you can no longer log on to life miles using your email address as it appears there may have been some sort of leak.
Actually security seems stepped up everywhere in Colombia in particular the banks who seem to question payments and introduce more and more restrictions on the use of accounts.
Some things about the call center have improved. A couple of years ago the call quality and reliability was far worse and you'd often have to recall after a line drop.

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Speaking of lifemiles, that has been one of the better Miles programs I have used - easy to book flights and usually, the taxes are not that much compared to say flying blue which seem a lot more.

Avianca can be terrible in other ways; flying from Bogota to London, then from there to Dubai, they refused to check my bags through because they were not partner airlines. I was going to have to go through immigration etc to get them and check them back in. Once I was able to bully my way and get the supervisor to authorize it - the second time, they wouldn't budge.

Funny though, in the lounge they called me up and they had a baggage handler there who gave me my changed bag ticket for the bags all the way through.

I often complain about them when they mess up on their facebook page - they always answer promptly, I will give them that, even if the answer is not always what I am looking or.

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I should temper that about lifemiles - my last time I tried, I had some great flights and it would not process my C/C - gave me a message to call the call centre which I did, however the system did not save my reservation, and by the time I spoke to someone the cheap miles tickets had gone!! (only 11,000 miles to the Dom Republic)

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Paradise Lost I don't know why you seem to not want to let up on trying to undermine the veracity of this thread.
Are you and Tim related ?

The site is for us to share information and learn not to try too one up anyone.

#1. From my experience (which don't bother I know you'll disagree) (just saving you the time) When I choose a different country on either the Avianca or Copa site the flag and language change but I still remain in gringoland for pricing.

#2. Try this on Avianca On the US site MZL to SDQ (Manizales to Santo Domingo Domincan Republic) 10/29/2016 to 11/7/2016 I get a price of just of $713.30 USD

On the Avianca Colombia site which was so generously provided by another member I get $1,693.147 COP for the same exact price which at an exchange rate of 2,900 COP/ USD = $583.79 USD

A savings of $130.00.
ON AN INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT.

I do not expect an ....Oh ! OK ..your right .

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00abuse

Two things I've just learnt about posting on an internet forum

1. You only should post information that supports the original OPs view. To do otherwise 'undermines the veracity of the thread'.
2. If more than one responder disagrees with the OP then they must be related ~ some strange view that only through blood ties can people disagree with you .

On your posting I was able to replicate your pricing. As I priced both using the Avianca site using the different 'flags' and didn't get the same fares that sort of torpedoes your theory about the IP control of pricing. However

You are right about MZL- SDQ being cheaper on the Colombian site. You are sort of helped in that there's a special on one of the return flights which inflates the saving but looking over a longer period yes it is cheaper. Looking at the itinerary one can certainly see why Avianca might be running specials on it. That 16 hour return gives you lots of time to enjoy your savings.

I'd used JFK-BOG as my example probably (in your view mistaken) hope that it would likely be a useful comparison for people booking from the US. After all in 2015 some 300,000 people flew from El Dorado to New York. How many people flew your example? 500 (?) and how many of those where Gringos booking tickets from the US? I am sure there are other examples there of point to points that are cheaper and I'll also suggest that the main line routings are more often the same.

If you're convinced that Avianca generally imposes a significant tax on non-Colombians I won't be able to dissuade you from that. Airlines that use pricing techniques to maximize revenues. In the case you state it's probable that showing a tight price on that routing in the US has little return for them. It isn't taxing. It's revenue management.

The other thing that you ignore is that it's more difficult to use the Colombian 'flagged' version on the site. For example the payment portion is more focused on Colombians who generally don't have credit cards with decent limits. So you'll see there - for example - the ability to book and then get a piece of paper to take to your Colombian bank to make the payment in Pesos. As I said in an earlier posting (and apologies if this destroys any remaining veracity) check both sites and if there is a reasonable saving see if you can make it work. But suggesting to everyone that everything is cheaper on the 'Colombian site' just isn't correct.

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ParadiseLost

6/26/2016 14:42 EST

My experience

- there's generally no difference between the Colombian version of the site and the US version for International fares.
=======================================

ParadiseLost

6/26/2016 15:33 EST

Over the years I've booked plenty of Avianca flights either in the US, Colombia and even a couple of times in other locations. I've never seen this 'dramatic' difference that you suggest based on location. Do you have any examples?
======================================

ParadiseLost

6/28/2016 09:20 EST

So in this best case you can argue that it's $14 cheaper to book on the Colombian site and that only works if your credit card gives you a better rate than Avianca is giving you - 2,938. If that's worth it for all of the potential hassles of using the Colombian site go for it.
======================================

So after all your prodding me to show you a savings on an international flight and affirming it would be $14 at best I show you a $130 savings on a $713 flight and you respond with saying that I'm right ..but ....................................... .................................................................................. ...................................................................

As I said in the last sentence of my previous post " I do not expect an ....Oh ! OK ..your right . "

You did not disappoint. lol

By the way ... Are you neighbors with cafetero by any chance ???

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00abuse

I am sure many have found this thread helpful and informative as I did.

In my example if you and a significant other are going on a quick Caribbean get away that is a total combined savings of $260 for both tickets.

Thanks again to all whom so generously provided the links to do this.

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00abuse

No I don't know that I'm a neighbor of cafetero. Is he meant to be another member of my extended family?
Good luck on your vacation. I'm sure your significant other needs it.

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00abuse

She would agree lol ...
just ribbing a little. nothing personal.

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00abuse